Creative Career Idea 💡 Make & Sell Your Own Templates

this is one of my fav kinds of digital products 🥰

Yo, yo, yo! It’s time for our fun weekly series called “The Coolest Creative Careers in the World for 2024.” 🌈 💀 Each week you’ll get a new creative career idea sent to your inbox designed to get the wheels turning, see things from a new perspective, and help you figure out your next great chapter (without binge-eating too many french fries). Let’s dive in!

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You guys.

I need to tell you something.

I have a BIG confession.

I use Tonic’s website templates (aff link) for literally everything I do.

• New website? Yup.

• New brand? Yup.

• New sales page? Yup.

• New Canva prezzie? Yup.

• New opt-in page? Yup.

• New social templates? Yup.

• New lead magnet? Yup.

• New Shopify store? Yup.

• New digital product download? Yup.

And, not for nothin’, but I’ve been WAITING IMPATIENTLY LIKE A CHILD for today, because today is the day they come out with their brand-new fall collection—and I RAN to the site to check out the new design. It’s called Valencia. And I LOVE IT.

It’s their first template that feels “bold,” like me—even though I always change all of the fonts and color palettes and logos and images anyway. 😁 But, it’s nice not to have to muck around with it all to make the text really, really, really big (because obviously) and make everything fit and readjust for mobile, etc.

So, why am I telling you this?! Two reasons!

Reason #1: If you need a new website, highly recommend.

Reason #2: You get 20% off right now during the sale.

Reason #3: Jen has made $15 million dollars selling her templates online. FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS, YOU GUYS. (She talks about how she did it here.)

So, today I wanted to highlight this as a very, very viable career option ⚡️, because she is absolutely killing it out there.

There are three reasons why I think templates are going to continue to be hotter than ever: first, because people are over the hustle life (they just want ease, and templates make your life easy); second, because templates look nothing like templates anymore, but rather $50,000 custom sites (especially the new Valencia template, whoa); and third, because in my personal experience, my own templates have sold very, very well!

Yurrrppp, you don’t have to sell website templates to sell templates.

One of my best-selling products was called LOVE, BUSINESS OWNER and it was a collection of 300+ email responses for tricky situations, e.g. “how do you say this, but in professional???” We dedicated a good chunk of time coming up with the content, and then I hired it out to a designer to make a kick-ass beautiful product, and then it sold like wildfire. But, that’s the thing: once you make the initial time investment, after that, you can sit back and let it sell.

Jen makes a website template only once—but can sell it 1,000 times.

That’s leverage.

And, that’s the power of digital products!

So, let’s brainstorm a few ideas for templates that you’re not even probably THINKING ABOUT YET AS A THING.

You could sell:

• Knitting & crocheting templates

• “How to paint a cat” templates

• Spreadsheet templates that already contain formulas

• Budgeting templates for interior designers including their markups (or insert profession!)

• Script templates to help people negotiate their salary / negotiate at a car dealership / negotiate a real estate transaction / negotiate a conflict

• Garden templates for exactly what to plant, where (this already exists - you should have a piece of the pie!) - I NEED THIS SO BAD. I mean, how cute is this????? It doesn’t have to be complex to be useful.

• Teaching templates chock full of curriculum ideas for new teachers (so handy!)

• Templates you hang on the wall and then just drill into the template for perfect gallery walls

• Templates for how to style your table, your patio, your porch (and apparently even your refrigerator—"fridgescaping” is a thing, lol)

• Templates for “X thing in a box” - business in a box, subscription biz in a box, my life in a box….hahahahahahahaha

• Templates for what to wear every day of the month—like, done for you, here’s what you wear, here’s how you pair it, here are the links to buy it.

• Templates for presentations.

• Templates for logos.

• Templates for emails.

• Why aren’t there more delicious email templates?!

• Templates for writing a book

• Templates for social media (Rachel Karten is killing this right now, with her 70+ post ideas)

• Templates for building a shed, or a pergola, or a patio (I MEANNNN!)

• Templates for screenplay writing

• Templates for homeschooling

• Templates for kids’ activities by age

• Templates for gift giving! HERE IS WHAT TO BUY.

• Templates for holiday cards, and thank you cards, and condolence cards (imagine how cool it would be if someone wrote these for you so you never had to write something weird again???)

• Templates for etiquette abroad - when this happens, do this.

• Templates for setting up a professional recording studio in your home (put this light here, and this OTHER light here, and the mic here, and these knick knacks here).

• Templates for throwing your own pottery

SO MANY TEMPLATES.

What other fun template ideas could there be? What other templates do YOU wish you had?!?

Get creative! Your world and your possibilities are only limited by what you are willing to say yes to.

Not everything needs to be a $2,000 video course.

Sometimes, the best way forward is just by starting small. And, I can’t think of a better digital product to get your feet wet???

If you love the sounds of this, here’s how I’d get started:

1. Think about what people are always asking you for help with. Can you templatize that?

2. I’d 100% get these colorful PDF templates to design it yourself.

3. I’d KEEP IT DEAD SIMPLE. I’d use Flodesk to make a visually-stunning checkout & digital product delivery page. (I just started testing Flodesk for my super duper secret new project, and omg. The user experience is actually really, really delicious. It makes you want to do email marketing. Wasn’t expecting that. Of course, it has its issues - no referral rewards, no API to connect with tools like Sparkloop, very simple workflows and automations…but when you want to keep it simple? And you want it to look real, real sexy? HOT DAMN. They’re kicking everyone’s ass in the design department.)

4. Then, I’d use Flodesk to make an opt-in page for a free template. And then, I’d use their upsell feature to show them an option to get your paid template at a discounted rate while they’re in the checkout. (Or alternatively on the thank-you page, post-purchase.)

5. Then, I’d create an entire newsletter and/or social channel around learning how to do YOUR THING. And I’d drive everrryonneeee to the free template. That would be THE LINK. And then I’d get their email. And then I’d let my systems do the rest, presenting them with an offer on the backend to upgrade to the paid version.

6. If you wanted to get even more slick about this, you could buy Jen’s “Digital Marketing Essentials Kit,” only available this week, which contains a NASTY GOOD upsell page & bonus page, like omg.

And then?

I’d start thinking of myself as a template business—and take it freakin’ seriously. What if you made the best templates in the world for your thing, like Jen did? What if you actually decided to have fun with it? What if you decided to go all in on your crazy ideas???

The nice thing about templates is that they give people that insta-satisfaction: they can download ‘em right away and get started, and there’s no waiting, no course log-ins, none of the complex stuff people have to remember to do.

Typically prices hover around $15 - $30—and definitely under the $50 price point, depending on what kinds of templates they are—but just think:

You could go start a bookshop and make $2 - $4 profit per book sold, while having a ton of monthly overhead like rent, electric, heat, and the physical burden of product inventory (NOT THAT WE AREN’T STILL ALL DREAMING ABOUT OWNING A BOOKSHOP)…

Or, you could create a collection of digital templates….or even publish a digital ebook 😉….and profit $25 every copy free and clear, while doing so from San Sebastian, Spain, in someone else’s bookstore, with a cute little espresso in your hand.

You see why we like the internet some days?

Okay, so let’s talk about it!

What do you like about it? What ideas are you percolating? Any other templates you’ve seen that are kick ass?

Tell me in the comments!

Until next week,